- >Best Crypto Friendly Banks
- >SoFi Crypto: A Good Investment for 2024?
Sofi Review: A Solid Trading Platform for Crypto Beginners
SoFi started out with serious concentration on the issue of student loans. The ideas was that SoFi could make it much easier for student loan borrowers to refinance those loans when necessary.
These days, SoFi has grown into a wide variety of different financial services, including a cryptocurrency offering. Now, SoFi is one of the fastest growing participants in the new age of digital banks, competing with the likes of Wealthsimple and Robinhood.
While SoFi still provides flexible options for those who are in need of personal student loans, the financial services company also offers personal lending options for other reasons and even home loans. SoFi Invest can help users plan ahead with its automated investment capabilities, and this is the section of the app where bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies come into play.
Dec. 1, 2023, Update: SoFi has decided to end crypto services. Users can liquidate their holdings or transfer to Blockchain.com. If you’re looking for a crypto alternative we recommend eToro or Kraken.
SoFi Crypto Overview
- Receive $10 when you start trading crypto assets
- Only available in the United States
- Completely custodial platform
- Supports BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH & ETC
SoFi Pros & Cons
Pros
1.25% fee for trading cryptocurrencies
No ATM fees
No minimum deposit
Receive $10 when you start trading crypto assets
Cons
Only available in the United States
Custodial bitcoin wallet
No physical bank branches
What is SoFi?
SoFi stands for Social Finance. It’s a personal finance company based in San Francisco, and it was originally founded all the way back in 2011. SoFi provides a variety of financial services such as investing, banking, and personal loans. Notably, the fintech company raised money from PayPal co-founder and legendary Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel back in 2014.
How Does SoFi’s Crypto Feature Work?
To start trading cryptocurrency with a SoFi account, you’ll need to head to the SoFi Invest section of the app. Cryptocurrencies are included as just another section of the overall SoFi Invest platform. Currently, SoFi rewards users with $10 in their accounts if they decide to trade at least $10 worth of cryptocurrency through the SoFi platform. It’s possible to earn even more if you trade higher amounts of crypto.
While that $10 bonus may seem too good to pass up, it’s important to remember that, like many other crypto-integrated digital banks, SoFi is a completely custodial platform. This means you will not be able to deposit crypto from your personal wallet to the SoFi platform or withdraw your crypto holdings to take control over the private keys associated with the coins. This is, obviously, a major negative aspect of the platform from the perspective of crypto purists. SoFi has stated that deposits and withdrawals are not available due to security concerns; however, they could still add this functionality in the future.
In terms of altcoin support, SoFi crypto is pretty good. It offers access to over 22 different coins including Bitcoin Ether, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ether Classic.
Which Cryptocurrencies Can You Buy and Sell?
For the cryptocurrency market, SoFi supports the trading of bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ether Classic. But remember, you will not be able to transfer any of these crypto assets out of your SoFi account and into a non-custodial wallet. On top of the coins that are supported for trading, there are also another 40 cryptocurrency price feeds available in SoFi Invest.
SoFi is only available in the United States, so the U.S. dollar is the only unit of account supported by the platform.
Country Restrictions
SoFi is currently only available in the United States, which is a major downside of this app’s potential as a bitcoin bank. That said, it is available in all 50 states.
Fees
The most important fee to consider for someone who wants to use SoFi as a bitcoin bank will be the fee on trading cryptocurrencies, which is 1.25%. This is somewhat competitive in terms of user-friendly ways to buy crypto, and it’s cheaper than Coinbase.
Outside of crypto, SoFi has focused on providing a fee-free experience with digital money. There are no fees related to holding money in the app, minimum account balances, or overdrafts. SoFi even reimburses users for ATM fees charged on Allpoint Network ATMs.
SoFi offers a wide variety of financial services, and there may be fees associated with these other aspects of the SoFi platform.
Supported Crypto Wallets
There is no cryptocurrency wallet support included in SoFi, as the app is a completely custodial solution. Having said that, SoFi has said they may support cryptocurrency withdrawals on their platform in the future.
What Else Does SoFi Offer?
SoFi is an incredible one-shop stop for all your banking needs with high-yield checking and savings accounts, personal loans and mortgages, an exclusive cashback Mastercard and more.
On the investment side, SoFi is separated into four categories:
- Active Invest (Choose the stocks and ETFs you want manually)
- Auto Invest (Low-fee Robo Advisor for anyone that wants to set and forget it)
- IRA (Retirements accounts with support for Traditional, SEP and Roth IRAs)
- Crypto (Buy and sell 30+ different coins using the SoFi app)
SoFi Invest offers several compelling features over its competitors including a bonus of up to $1,000 when you fund a new account and complimentary access to SoFi financial planners.
The SoFi Mastercard will be of particular interest to crypto users as you can use the rewards (2% cashback) to purchase coins like Bitcoin or Ethereum.
How to Sign Up for SoFi
You can sign up for a SoFi account via the mobile app or on the official SoFi website. The first page of the sign-up process will ask you for some basic information about yourself such as your name, state of residence, and email. After you finish that initial form, you will then need to decide if you want an individual account or a joint account. For most people, the individual account will be the proper option. After all, you can add another account holder later anyway.
After you’ve chosen which account type you’d like to have, you’ll then need to provide SoFi with some more personal information. The first page of this section will ask you for your full address, and you can also choose to have your SoFi debit card sent to this address. Next, you’ll attach your phone number to your account as a security measure. You will be asked to enter a verification number that is sent to the phone number you entered to make sure you are actually in control of that phone number.
After your phone number is verified, you will need to share your citizenship status, date of birth, and social security number. Again, this is a platform that is only available in the United States. Lastly, SoFi will ask you some questions related to financial regulations they must follow. Once you’ve answered those questions and agreed to the SoFi terms of service, your account will be created and you can make your first deposit.
How Does SoFi Compare to Robinhood, Wealthsimple?
SoFi is often compared to investments apps like Robinhood or Wealthsimple or even mobile payments tools like Square’s Cash App. It’s a fair comparison considering all three are shaking up the traditional banking ecosystem.
It should be said that SoFi has the most complete platform with options for banking, credit cards, stock investing, loans, mortgages, crypto investing and more. Currently Robinhood has banking, crypto and investing but no credit cards or mortage options. Wealthsimple is limited to investing and Cash App only offers Bitcoin, which will be a dealbreaker to some.
Check out our individual reviews of each platform to learn more:
SoFi Frequently Asked Questions
While SoFi Invest users are able to trade cryptocurrencies, they do not take true ownership of the coins they buy directly on the underlying crypto network. Users also cannot withdraw coins to their own personal wallets. It is better to think of SoFi as a bitcoin bank rather than a bitcoin wallet.
There is no spread to worry about with SoFi crypto prices. Instead, you just need to know that there is a 1.25% fee attached to every cryptocurrency trade. SoFi uses partners like Coinbase in their backend to handle trades for their users.
SoFi does not currently offer bitcoin-denominated loans; however, there are a variety of loan types that can be accessed via this platform that are denominated in U.S. dollars. If you’d like to gain access to loans denominated in bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, you will need to sign-up for a crypto lending platform that offers these features. The financialization of bitcoin in this way is still rather rare in financial apps that are mostly focused on mainstream audiences.
Yes. SoFi users who decide to purchase some cryptocurrency via the app will be able to get a $10 reward if they do at least ten dollars’ worth of crypto asset trading via SoFi Invest.
While the debit card associated with a SoFi Money account is not specifically focused on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the reality is this debit card can be used as a crypto debit card in a roundabout manner. To use your SoFi Money debit card with bitcoin, you just need to buy and sell bitcoin in the SoFi Invest section of the app. If you’d like, you can hold a majority of your SoFi funds in bitcoin until you are ready to spend them. When you’re ready to spend your bitcoin via the SoFi debit card, you just need to sell the bitcoin in SoFi Invest and then transfer the proceeds from that sale into your SoFi Money account, which is connected to your SoFi debit card.
Yes. SoFi got its own bank charter in 2022.
Yes. SoFi Checking and Savings offers some of the highest APY available, although to get the highest APY you’ll have to sign up for direct deposit.
